Paul, Community, and Discipline offers a fresh and important study of exclusionary practices in early Christ groups. Göran Forkman’s The Limits of the Religious Community (1972) had studied the penal code at Qumran and its importance for understanding the gospel of Matthew. But White greatly expands our understanding of exclusionary practices in Paul by setting them in the much wider context of the exclusionary practices in Athens and Republican and Imperial Rome as well as sectarian practices at Qumran. Paul, Community, and Discipline is a sophisticated and nuanced treatment of discipline within Pauline groups, based on a deep knowledge of primary source material and current anthropological theory.

John S. Kloppenborg, University of Toronto

With impressive breadth, Adam White here explores a range of parallels from the ancient world to illumine an understudied topic: the practice of discipline and the purpose of expulsion in the Pauline letters. The approach is fresh, and the results significantly deepen our understanding of the social dynamics of early Christian communities.

John Barclay, Durham University

It is a conspicuous gap in the scholarship of the last fifty years that no-one has done research on the internal protection of Pauline congregations by the exclusion of wrongdoers. Dr. White has a commanding knowledge of this field and shows his expertise in Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and early Christian history on every page. His way of writing is superb: very vivid and clear, with good illustrating examples, while never losing the thread. Thus, Dr. White’s new book is a treat which everyone interested in the social aspect of Pauline ecclesiology should read!

Thomas Schmeller, Goethe Universität

Dr Adam White’s book Paul, Community, and Discipline is a long overdue study on church discipline in the New Testament era. Not only does it fill a gap in the academic study of discipline and expulsion in early church communities, it also fills a lacuna in practical knowledge for the contemporary local church as it seeks to reflect the standards described in the New Testament. Particularly helpful is the insight that churches expelled members for behaviours that both endangered the continued functioning of the Christian community and brought them into disrepute among their pagan neighbours. In an era, particularly in Australia, where church disciplinary practices have been brought under the public spotlight, this book gives much needed insight into how the early church dealt with significant and damaging problems.

Lyn Kidson, Alphacrucis College

Recent scholarship demonstrates an increasing recognition of the particularities of the Pauline assemblies; in our context as well as Paul’s, what is sometimes obscured by a focus on differences are the points of similarity. Adam White’s work on boundaries and discipline in Paul’s letters admirably manages this balance while subtly probing such realities as the social death of exile and the implications of being “handed over to Satan.” Today’s students (and professors!) are sensitive to such questions, and I am grateful for Adam’s tutelage as I endeavor to tutor my own students on Paul and his assemblies.

Holly Beers, Westmont College

This is an important and timely study that uncovers Paul’s practices of communal discipline as found in the Pauline tradition. Adam White’s social history and social theory approach offers a sophisticated framework for understanding historical evidence that is at the same time theoretically aware. He offers new pathways to uncover answers to old questions in regard to the parallels for the Pauline Christ groups and the types of contextualized solutions he and those who followed him offered. This book serves as an informative entry point into to social setting of the earliest Christ-movement while making the foreign understandable. Highly recommended!

Brian Tucker, Moody Bible Institute